How did a scholarship impact Andrea Gregory-Kreps’ life for the better? The better question: How didn’t it?
“It alleviated the immediate stress of applying for bank loans and the long-term stress of repaying them!” said Gregory-Kreps, a 1999 Lilly scholarship recipient. “The money my family saved by not having to pay my college tuition was used to help fund college tuition for my two younger sisters. Also, I was able to use money saved from not paying tuition and put it toward the purchase of my and my husband’s first home.”
Agriculture Communication
Thanks to the scholarship, Gregory-Kreps was able to graduate from Purdue University with a bachelor’s degree in Agriculture Communication. The relationships and skills she built during her undergraduate years led to an assistantship with the Purdue Cooperative Extension Service (CES).
“The CES funded the completion of my MSEd in Curriculum and Instruction through the Purdue College of Education,” she said. “I worked for years for Eli Lilly in Lafayette writing training courses for their laboratory and quality control areas. Later, I returned to Purdue and worked for the Purdue University Center for Cancer Research as the Senior Research Administrator.”
Financial Support for College Impacts Everyone
Relationship skills and finding more meaningful professional opportunities are not the only benefit that scholarships offer. The financial support also allows graduates to focus on their post-collegiate lives without the weighty burden of student loans to repay and the scholarship helped put money directly back into the local economy.
Gregory-Kreps would have still attended Purdue without the scholarship, she said, “but I may still be paying off the loans!”
“Receiving the scholarship allowed my husband and I to put money toward the purchase of our first home instead of repaying TWO sets of college loans,” she said. “My husband’s was enough!”
Scholarships in Jasper and Newton Counties Make us Better
Lilly Endowment Inc., in conjunction with Jasper Newton Foundation, is helping people in our communities like Andrea Gregory-Kreps achieve their goals and be better contributors to their neighborhoods, towns or cities, and our state. To read more stories about community members like Andrea, visit jaspernewtonfoundation.org/get-connected.
To learn more about scholarship opportunities through the Jasper Newton Foundation, please visit our scholarship page at jaspernewtonfoundation.org/apply-for-scholarships.
